He Wonders
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: There was once a time when they used to smile for no reason- over a good game of chess, getting the last sugar quill in the box, getting one of the good armchairs by the fire." A night in the Gryffindor Common Room. Ron thinks about a few things.


A/N: Okay this is a Harry Potter story that doesn't mention Harry once, ha! Okay basically Ron and Hermione are just sitting in the common room late one night (let's say Harry's asleep). The conversation starts off with Hermione goes to Ron than back and forth. Please read and review.  
  
They sat in silence. Not a comfortable silence, no those were rare in times of war. They sat in a smothering silence that pressed down on them. They hadn't spoken for hours. No one wanted to be the first to speak so they both resigned to merely sitting there. She sighed deeply and he readied himself for one of her rants about school and elf rights and handful of other stupidly trivial things. That was not however what he got.  
  
_"Everything's falling apart..."  
_  
He looked up from the blank piece of parchment before him and stared at her. Her eyes were round and terribly bloodshot, her face was unnaturally pale and drawn, even her normally unkempt hair looked worse than usual.  
  
_"You all right?"  
_  
Her shoulders sagged and she closed her eyes wearily. She looked so impossibly tired.  
  
_"**I'm **falling apart."_  
  
She rubbed her stiff ink stained fingers together. He looked at her, taking her in for the first time in years, really. She looked far to old to be sixteen '_Sweet sixteen_,' he thinks, '_how ironic_.' She pinched the bridge of her nose, probably trying to alleviate a headache, leaving faint traces of charcoal black ink.  
  
_"Isn't everyone?"  
_  
She looked at him and he briefly wondered what was going to happen to them. How old would they be in two years time? It showed as clearly on him as it did on her. She'd mentioned it to him over the summer when she'd caught him in the kitchen late one night. She said he looked worn out, like his father when he came home at the end of the day. The kind of tired where even the simplest task seems to pose some huge hurdle. That's what she looked like then.  
  
_"You're not."  
_  
Her voice was quiet and raspy. It was mix of embarrassment and admiration- the sort of voice she seemed to always use with him.  
  
_"Yeah, I am."_  
  
He tried to smile at her, but his mouth didn't want to corporate with him and he felt it barely twitch. She tired to do the same, with the same results. He cringed inwardly, trying to remember a time when they had been able to smile genuinely. Now it seems as though every smile is laced with guilt or grief or some other ruddy emotion that has no place in a real, carefree smile. She lowered her head and bit her lip thoughtfully.  
  
_"You don't show it."  
_  
There was once a time when they used to smile for no reason- over a good game of chess, getting the last sugar quill in the box, getting one of the good armchairs by the fire. Now his chess set lays almost untouched, all the sugar quills lay broken in their box, and even the best armchairs seem lumpy and hard against their aching backs.  
  
_"I thought it be best if only one of us fell apart at a time. Openly anyway."  
_  
He shrugged childishly and she nodded. How tired was she that she didn't have some biting comment to shot back?  
  
_"You can have next week all right. I promise."_  
  
His mouth twitched again, as did hers. For a minute he thought he could see her as she should be, happy and relaxed, but the moment only lasted so long and soon the clock chimed twelve and the coach turned back into a pumpkin. He felt his stomach twist into a knot of frustration and anger, and he looked down else his eyes land on her and she think that his anger was directed towards her. Which it wasn't. Not tonight. His eyes landed on the blank piece of parchment and he briefly thought back to the homework he was suppose to be doing. 'Course she had already finished her own homework the day before and the only reason she sat there now was because she decided to do the extra credit she didn't really need. 'What good is this going to do?' he wondered silently feeling the urge to do something more than write a four foot essay on the benefits of ginger root. When the hell was ginger root going to help him-any of them? He looked up quickly stealing a glance at her. She was still staring at him, an intense stare that froze his insides and yet made his face heat up uncontrollably. His anger melted away.  
  
_"Ron?"_  
  
_"Hmm."_  
  
She opened her mouth and he could see the wheels in her head hard at work. She closed her mouth again and looked down at her lap. Then, with a sort of determination at he hadn't seen in ages, she looked up, set her shoulders and said:  
  
_"You really ought to finish your homework."_  
  
Once again his mouth twitched and she seemed rather pleased with herself. Maybe, just maybe, routine things like homework wouldn't be the things that drove him mad. Maybe they would be one of the few things that kept him sane in the long months of waiting.  
  
_"I s'pose. You know, you look beat, you should go to bed."  
_  
She nodded and turned back to her homework. He rolled his eyes, even though he hadn't expected her to listen, he knew her too well. He turned back to the forgotten parchment once more and touched it with the tip of his quill-  
  
_"Good night Ron."_  
  
She closed the tome before her and tucked it under her arm, rolled up her essay and stood to go.  
  
_"Night Hermione."_  
  
She nodded at him, turning away.  
  
_"See you in the morning, Ron."_  
  
_"Hermione."_  
  
_"Yes."_  
  
_"You've got ink on your nose, you know that?"_  
  
He reached over the table and a long pale finger touched the side of her nose.  
  
_"Just there."  
_  
She **smiled**.  
  
He **smiled** back.  
  
**Fin**.  
  
Disclaimer: No I don't own it. 


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